More Than We Can See
Before We Gather by Zach Hicks
| Scripture
Read Revelation 7:9-12
| Devotional
Do you ever look out on the gathered worshiping body of people and get discouraged? Something has drawn you into the ministry of worship. Some passion has prompted you to serve and kept you coming. And then maybe you look out at God’s people and don’t always see that same passion there.
Sometimes the discouragement is because some people seem so lifeless, disconnected, and disinterested. “We’re in the presence of Almighty God, here!” we think. “How could you possibly yawn or check your phone?” Other times the discouragement is because not everyone is present and the room feels empty or underpopulated.
In those moments, it’s important to seize the vision of worship given us by Revelation 7. This passage challenges us to close our physical eyes and strain our spiritual eyes to see what can be witnessed only by faith.
Revelation is one of those books that punches a hole in the wall between earth and heaven. And through that hole, we witness “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”” (Rev. 7:9-10). What we are witnessing is not just a megachurch. We are witnessing the megachurch that puts all our earthly megachurches to shame. Our megachurches, relatively speaking, are quite small and homogeneous. The heavenly megachurch makes our stadiums look like shacks and our multiethnic metropolises look like ingrown ghettos. And right now, the beautiful, heavenly megachurch is all gathered around Jesus, ceaselessly praising his salvation story, heaping loud, explosive, eternal glory onto the Lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world.
We could say that the worship of the heavenly church is a long, ever-flowing stream of worship. And here’s the mind blow- ing part: when we gather for worship in our spaces-whether it’s a theater, an old church building, a warehouse, a storefront, a field, or a living room–when we cross the threshold into those spaces, we step into that already moving stream and we join the song already being sung.
That means that when we gather for worship, we are always participating in something that is more than meets the eye. Our eyes often betray us, and we get discouraged. We see the sparse attendance or the lackluster participation and we wonder, “Is this all there is?” But the eyes of faith see the truer story.
You see, you just think you’ve come to your church. “But,” the writer to the Hebrews says, “you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (Heb. 12:22-24).
When we gather for worship, those you know who have died in the Lord-family, friends, loved ones-they’re all there too. When we gather for worship, Christians from centuries past are all there too. When we gather for worship, God’s armies of angels are there too. And most important, when we gather for worship, Jesus is there! May the Holy Spirit give us the eyes of faith to see these truer realities.
| Prayer
Aim your prayers in this direction:
- Pray that the Holy Spirit would impress upon the hearts and minds of all gathered for worship that they are part of a community much bigger than they can see.
- Pray for fresh wind from the Holy Spirit to energize the worship of those who are gathered to pray and praise with hopeful abandon.
- Ask the Holy Spirit to eliminate the distractions and discouragement that often take away from gathered worship that is wholly given over to the Lord.
